bankruptcy court is the only place unfunded public sector benefits can be renegotiated.

The cities & states made promises they cant keep. The politicians will never solve the problem. the legacy benefits tie into race, poverty & public service politics. Repubs don't have the principles to enact reform, & democrats dont even want reform; they just pass laws making it "unconstitutional" to reduce a pension.

can't wait for when the federal budget goes tilt. :)

how is paying into a pension a 'hand out'

Clearly cities cant afford these payouts, something has to give.

Which is one of the reasons that when FDR made unions legal, he also said that govt. people should NEVER be allowed to unionize because it is taxpayer money.

That is the real problem. People are now lifetime employees of the taxpayers.

Personally I don't feel sorry for any of them. They make a career out of sucking on the tits of the taxpayer and then want to continue to get paid even though they no longer are doing anything?

Whatever happened to common sense? You work, you get paid. You don't work, you don't get paid.

Keep the Joe, yo!

Exactly.

Plus most of these people are paid like $20.00/hour plus benefits on the surface. Which actually is more like $30-50.00/hour once you add in their healthcare, time off, employer pension or 401k (if a business), and alike. Assuming they get lifetime benefits, after they retire, you can only image what the TRUE COST to the business/city/school district taxpayer is in the end.

If you did not save or invest while making decent money like that, you get what you deserve.

:2 cents:

Depends what you feel is the goal of the union. By accepting future payments that everyone knew were a problem versus more money now, didn't they sell out their members?

Tell that to the fire dept if your house is ever on fire or if you ever need a emt. lol

I would.
FDR (the great Democrat God president) said it himself. And it makes sense.

I work to make money and take care of my family. Nobody is going to give me money when I don't work.

If you decide you want to be a cop or a firefighter or EMT then that's probably something that you love doing. And you get paid to do your job. Just like I do.

That is common sense. And since it's taxpayer money...they should have never been allowed to bring in unions to get MORE taxpayer money.

That's what FDR said. And he's the Democrat President who was the most liberal of all times and was the one who made unions legal to begin with.

Correct. You are also paid fairly well to most other Americans for DOING these jobs. For example, I know the police around here are making in the neighborhood of $75,000.00 annually BEFORE benefits, and are hired in around $45-50k for starters.

Last I checked the census data, that was above the average household median income from most people in the United States. If there are two people working, obviously you're making a decent living. Once you add in the TRUE COST to the municipality, tax payer, or business (if applicable) that would most likely be in the neighborhood of $100,000.00+ annually.

That is just one example....

:disgust

fitty bankruptcys

when it comes to money no one is reasonable any more.

Well as Tony said...try telling THAT to the cops the next time they are pulling you over as revenue collectors for the city and insurance companies to give you a ticket for doing 45 in a 35.
Or the next time you ask why you are being pulled over and they tell you to shut up like you were a dog.

Just try telling them that! You should be so thankful and get down on your knees and kiss their asses and give them all the lifetime benefits they ever want...because they do a job. :1orglaugh

speaking of FDR

http://youtu.be/MCitZZ_WZNQ

The same goes for teacher who bawl about only making $35,000.00/year. Um.... you only WORK 3/4th of the year!??!?!

If you do not like it, find a fucking job for that QUARTER that you do not WORK of the calendar year. You would then find you a teacher could make the $50-60k annually they believe they should be making or want. You do not get to have all of these vacations throughout the year and they get to live it up like Rockefellar just because you babysit some kids 8 hours a day.

Everyone else has to work the full calendar year, and gets less vacation or time off. Work part of the year. Make part of the cash.

:disgust

Yep, and govt. employees are almost impossible to fire. So once they get entrenched, many of them are free to be as inefficient and lazy as they want to be.

They can't be fired, they can't even be "demoted".

Hell, instead they get PROMOTED due to tenure!

In other words, the longer they suck off the taxpayers teats..the MORE they get.

when you have a fire tell the firemen get out of here . lol You have a heart attack I hope your wife knows cpr while she is driving you to the hospital.

Robbie, don't worry about what Tony thinks. He is not even a liberal. He is a socialist through and through as evidenced by him saying the only two people in congress he looks up to are: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Both true socialists, and proud of it.

Not that they need my defending them but most teachers don't really get 3 full months off per year. My cousin is a teacher and she says basically they stay about 7-10 days after the kids leave at the end of the school year to finish up everything from the year and they come back about 2 weeks before the kids arrive to get ready for the year. During the remaining 8-9 weeks off that they have many of them end up going to conferences and take classes. They normally do not get paid extra to do these things, they do them to either keep their job or to make themselves better. A few years ago my cousin (who is a science teacher) went to a two week conference to get some kind of certification. She was told flat out if she didn't get the cert she wouldn't have a job in the fall so she had no choice but to go to a two week class the second half of July.

So, subtract that two weeks and she is down to 6-7 weeks off during the summer. Still, it is a lot more time off than most people get, but hardly enough to get much of a job.

That said, I do remember when I was in high school there was one teacher who worked during the summer and occasionally during the school year at this little store in town and our school principle actually supervised a tree shearing crew during the summer so it can be done, but most of those jobs aren't going to pay a whole lot and it often isn't all that easy to get them.

The whole "what if you need the paramedics won't they be worth it then" line is such utter bullshit. People who say it are just obviously fucking stupid and/or have a vested interest.

Guess what, people will still line up for those jobs if they're a little less gold plated.

All public sector unions are a fucking travesty. I've worked in a couple unions , and had close dealings with others once I got into the professional workforce, and without exception the shit that I've seen and heard turns my stomach. I know a public sector employee that laughs about how much they get paid for doing nothing too.

sounds like a great idea, pay into retirement only to get nothing because the company decides its cheaper to claim bankruptcy than to pay out retirement money and benefits. all retirement funds should be managed and insured by third parties. that should be law. that would eliminate this problem, wouldn't it?

Incorrect my friend. Add in the 2 weeks of Xmas break and the week of spring break back into your formula.

Exactamundo. I am sure the rest of us would enjoy having a quarter of our calendar year off and not having to work, yet still getting paid/benefits and alike. Which is the point. You get more vacation or time off than most other people. So you do get some benefit from the teaching job that others do not have who are lucky to get 1-2 weeks off a year.

:disgust

you get what you pay for. do you want guys making minimum wage responsible for saving your life?

sure you get 2 weeks off (2 weeks is mandatory at least here in canada) but at a lot of places the more seniority you have the more you get. i know people who have been working at the same place for 15 years that get 5-6 weeks vacation.

So it's both the company or government's responsibility to take care of you now?

I guess in your world, there is no personal accountability for investing some of your $20-30.00/hour over the 20-30 years you had that job back into your own retirement and financial planning.

You basically are wishing upon a star, despite the writing has been on the wall about this financial crisis, pensions, and alike since I was a kid. I am now 40. I guess when the warning signs were flashing in people's faces for FOUR DECADES, they thought the magic taxpayer tooth fairy was going to come and grant some wishes and re-fund their pensions for them.

:disgust

No one gives a fuck about Canada. That is, unless Detroit was sold to them in the past week.

:2 cents:

As I said, they get more time off than most people, but it isn't like you can go out and get a job over spring break.


I have mixed emotions about full pensions. On one hand I feel like they should be done away with and everyone just gets a 401K style retirement. This way you can put into it what you want, your employer contributes and your retirement is what you make it.

However, I also understand the reality of that is that most of those people will end up on medicare anyway because it will be nearly impossible for them to buy health insurance when they retire so the tax payers will end up paying for them one way or the other, it is just a matter of how and when and decide to do it.

One of my best friends is a police officer. He has been doing it for about 12 years now and he gets more paid vacation that he can take so he ends up selling a bunch of it back. He gets about 6-8 weeks per year, but because they area small department in a small town the schedule really only lets him take about 3-4 weeks per year so he ends up selling back about a month worth of vacation time each year.

That is a union provision based on his local and their contract. My point is, that not ALL unions have those same benefits. My sister was in a union when she worked at a paper plant. She was there around 10 years and never received more than 2 weeks, and only one of them was paid. I work at the phone company, and yes, you had a scale of how many weeks you would get based on seniority. I also was a union steward, and worked for management in my time there to see all sides of the issue at hand.

What you get as a union worker will vary based on the contract. Not only in regards to time off, but what is covered for their pensions, healthcare, vacation and EP time, etc.. It's not uniform across the board and can vary wildly based on that union and their negotiated agreements.

That said, for workers outside of a union, they could get 2 weeks a year and work someplace for 30 years. It could be paid or unpaid at the discretion of the company. They could be allowed sick leave days or not, all depending on the attendance policy. A non-union job is going to be a complete mix bag in regards to benefits beyond the basic labor laws.

:2 cents:

Why? Are you telling me they won't do the job that they are getting paid to do?

I'm not asking retired firemen or emt's to do anything. I would be asking the actual guys who are working and getting paid.

how does a privately insured retirement fund with a third party have anything to do with the government? last time i checked companies don't give the option to opt out of retirement deductions. if people are expected to invest their own, they should be able to not pay the company. what is the point in paying so much in deductions if there is no guarantee that money isn't going to just disappear?

What "guarantees" are being offered? A guarantee the taxpayers are going to bail out your retirement fund? I do not remember anyone giving me any guarantees I would not lose money in the stock market, that the phone company would not go belly up, that I would have forever health benefits regardless of the economic climate and cost of doing business.

While you're bouncing all over the map as to an actual union, a company, and Canada vs U.S. labor laws, the point is still that there is no guarantee on anything.

If I have to explain to you that the quality of a product actually has near zero to do with it's cost, and far more to do with the marketing, availability, marketing and marketing then I really don't know what to say. The exception to this is when the quality of a product is inherently obvious. However most things these days, a consumer has no idea of the quality, nor the cost to produce.

But really, its your choice if you want to be a sucker and buy the exact same contact lenses, or sunglasses, or whatever else has famously been shown to be scandalously sold as a cheap and expensive versions when the actual product is exactly the same.

again i said nothing about government or taxpayers. i agree they should not be paying for it...